The recipe collection

Dishes made from memory, written down at last.

Four categories, dozens of recipes, all of them originally made by someone who never measured anything. These are the dishes that taste like a specific kitchen, a specific season, a specific person.

A pot of rich golden broth simmering on a stovetop with vegetables and herbs visible

About this collection

Why every recipe here has a backstory

I don't post a recipe unless I know something about where it came from. Not because food history is required reading, but because knowing that a dish traveled from a small town in Pennsylvania to a Detroit kitchen in 1962 changes how you taste it. It gives you something to hold onto while you cook.

Most of these recipes went through at least three attempts before landing here. Some went through twelve. The grandmother's chicken stew took two years and eighteen batches. The version below is the one that finally made my mother go quiet and just eat without saying anything, which is the highest praise she gives.

Category 01

Grandma's Classics

These are the recipes that lived in someone's hands before they lived on paper. Slow braises, hearty stews, and the kind of soups that take all day and fill a house with a smell you chase for the rest of your life.

  • Sunday Chicken Stew with Root Vegetables
    The one my grandmother made every cold Sunday. Thighs braised low and slow in broth heavy with celery root, parsnips, and a bouquet garni she kept tied with kitchen string. The broth turns cloudy and rich by hour three. Serve it in deep bowls with whatever bread you have.
    Main
  • Hand-Rolled Egg Noodles
    Three ingredients (flour, eggs, salt) and a rolling pin. My great-aunt cut hers into uneven strips on the kitchen table and never once worried about whether they were straight. They went into the chicken stew, into beef broth, into butter with a handful of parsley. The recipe is the same for all three uses.
    Staple
  • Black Bean Soup, Three Generations Deep
    My family's version starts with dried beans soaked overnight and a sofrito built slowly from onion, green pepper, and a truly alarming amount of garlic. A splash of red wine vinegar at the end cuts through the richness. Serve over white rice or with a heel of Cuban bread pressed against the side of the bowl.
    Soup
  • Slow-Braised Short Ribs with Dried Mushrooms
    A winter recipe. The dried porcini go in at the start and dissolve into the braising liquid, giving it a depth of flavor that fresh mushrooms just don't produce. Cooked low for four hours until the meat falls at the touch of a fork. This is the dish my father requested every birthday for thirty years.
    Main
  • Fried Chicken in Buttermilk Brine
    Brined overnight in buttermilk with black pepper and cayenne, dredged in seasoned flour twice, fried in a heavy cast iron skillet with a lid for the first ten minutes. The steam under the lid is the trick my aunt taught me and never wrote down anywhere. Crispy, juicy, deeply Southern.
    Main

Category 02

Weeknight Family Dinners

Not the fancy Sunday recipes. The Tuesday ones. The things parents made reliably for years because the family would eat them. Often humble, often fast, and often surprisingly good when you return to them as an adult.

  • Skillet Pasta with Sausage and Greens
    Italian sausage browned with fennel seeds, then braised in white wine and chicken stock with a whole bunch of escarole wilted in. The pasta finishes cooking right in the pan and soaks up everything. Ready in thirty-five minutes. My mom made this on the nights she was tired and we still talk about it.
    Quick
  • Stuffed Peppers — The Old Way
    Ground beef, white rice, a tin of tomatoes, and whatever herbs were around. The filling goes in raw (rice and all) and the peppers roast for an hour and fifteen minutes while the filling cooks inside them and the tops char lightly. No pre-cooking, no extra pans. My mother made these once a week for a decade.
    Main
  • Garlicky Baked Potato Soup
    A thick soup built from baked russets, roasted garlic, and sharp cheddar. Rough-mashed, never blended smooth. The texture should have some body to it. Finish with sour cream stirred in at the table, bacon if you have it, and chives in summer. This is the recipe I reach for the first cold night of October every year without fail.
    Soup
  • Pork Tenderloin with Apple and Onion
    Browned hard in a cast iron, then roasted briefly with sliced apple, onion, and a splash of apple cider vinegar. Rest it well before slicing. The pan drippings with a little cream added make the only sauce it needs. Forty-five minutes total and the kitchen smells like autumn.
    Main

Category 03

Baking & Sweets

The baked goods are often the most personal recipes of all. Bread that only rises correctly in a specific kitchen at a specific altitude. Pie crust made with lard that tastes completely different from butter. Cookies that have to be a little underdone or they don't taste right.

  • Buttermilk Cornbread, Cast Iron Only
    A batter with a proper proportion of stone-ground yellow cornmeal to flour — more cornmeal than flour, which is how the South has always done it. Preheat the skillet in the oven until it smokes, add bacon fat, then pour in the batter. The crust forms in under a minute. You cannot get that from a baking dish.
    Bread
  • Molasses Spice Cookies
    Dark molasses, brown sugar, and a combination of ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, and clove. The dough needs at least two hours in the refrigerator before rolling. Bake them until just set — they should look slightly underdone in the center when you pull them. They crisp up perfectly as they cool and keep for days in a tin.
    Cookies
  • Apple Stack Cake — An Appalachian Classic
    Six thin spiced cake layers stacked with slow-cooked dried apple filling between each one. The cake needs a day to sit before you cut it. The layers soften, the filling saturates the spiced dough, and the whole thing becomes deeply tender. An old Appalachian tradition made for community gatherings where each guest brought a layer.
    Cake
  • Sourdough Rye with Caraway
    Built on a rye sourdough starter that I have kept fed for three years. The loaf is dense and dark, fragrant with caraway, and the kind of bread that holds up to strong cheese and pickled things. Slice it thin. It toasts beautifully after a day and honestly gets better for four or five days after baking.
    Bread

Category 04

Holiday Dishes

The recipes that are tied so tightly to a time of year that making them in July feels like a small violation of something. They taste partly of the season and partly of every previous time you've had them.

  • Herb-Roasted Turkey with Gravy from the Pan
    Dry-brined for two days with coarse salt and dried herbs. Roasted on a bed of rough-cut vegetables that become the gravy. I do not baste, I do not flip, I do not tent. The skin is the priority and it comes out amber and shatteringly crisp. The gravy underneath catches every drip and needs nothing added but a little stock and a pass through a strainer.
    Holiday
  • Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Crust
    Roasted sweet potatoes mashed with butter, brown sugar, and a surprising amount of vanilla. The top is a rough crumble of pecans, brown sugar, and flour rather than marshmallows. It caramelizes and crunches. This is the dish that goes before dessert at Thanksgiving and yet somehow functions as dessert anyway.
    Side
  • Cranberry Walnut Relish — No Cooking Required
    Fresh cranberries and a whole orange (peel and all) pulsed in a food processor with sugar and chopped walnuts. No heat, no pectin, no canning jars. The relish is bright and tart with a slightly bitter note from the orange peel that cuts right through the richness of everything else on a Thanksgiving plate. Make it two days ahead.
    Condiment
  • Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls
    An enriched dough made the night before, refrigerated overnight, and pulled out at six in the morning to proof while everyone is still in bed. The filling is brown sugar, cinnamon, soft butter, and a generous amount of orange zest. They go in the oven at eight. Cream cheese frosting, applied immediately so it melts slightly into the warm rolls.
    Baking

A recipe is just the beginning.

Behind every dish here is a story worth reading. Head to Food Stories to find out where these recipes came from and how to preserve the ones in your own family.

Read the food stories